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MORAL TRAINING 

OF THE 

SCHOOL CHILD 



BY 



F. G. MARTIN 

Altadena, Calif. 




RICHARD G. BADGER 

BOSTON 



Copyright, 191 3, by Richard G. Badger 



All Rights Reicrved 



^4 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 






©CI.A354732 



■K. . 



- • CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 7 

I 

Need of Moral Training in the Public 

Schools 13 

Public Schools Only Nursery of Millions . . 18 

Its Economic Phase 20 

Its Civic Phase 23 

Primary Object of Education 25 

Public School a Democracy 26 

Inherent Worth of a Human Soul .... 28 

II 

Scope and Methods of Moral Training . . 32 

Virile Moral Teaching 35 

Elemental Moral Training . . . . . . 38 

Teach Personal Responsibility 40 

Practical Moral Teaching 42 

Teach Moral Courage .43 

Sources of Moral Instruction 47 

Schools Civic Barracks ....... 49 

III 

Qualifications for Teaching Morals . . 50 
Teacher's Character and Personality . . .52 

IV 

Benefits of Moral Training — General Re- 
marks 55 



PREFACE 

PUBLIC schools have been a potential factor 
in the marvelous development of the United 
States. Their influence has flowed in every vein 
and artery of life in every generation since the 
Mayflower band put foot on Plymouth Rock. In 
these humble, homely halls of learning have ma- 
triculated men and women who have received 
inspiration and have gone forth into the greater 
school of life to make the name American illus- 
trious by their history-emblazoned deeds. 

The vestal fires of intelligence, progress and 
free institutions are perpetually burning in the 
thousands of public temples of learning dotting 
the hills and valleys and sentineling the crowded 
thoroughfares of the land. To perpetuate and 
preserve inviolate these educational fires is the 
fervid purpose of every true American. 

Because of the tremendous potentiality for good 
or evil inherent in the public schools they demand 
jealous guarding against harmful tendencies as 
well as sedulous cultivation and expansion and 
betterment. 

From the standpoint of mental and physical 



8 PREFACE 

development the public school system of all the 
States has made marked improvement. Courses 
of study and text-books have been made to fit the 
evolutionary needs of the developing child mind. 
Methods of teaching have been modernized. 
Physiological, psychological and scientific facts 
and principles are more generally respected in the 
mental and physical training of the child. 

But while the public schools are sending out 
pupils better trained mentally and better equipped 
physically than ever before, the third and equally 
important side of triangular child nature is left 
deplorably ill-developed or, worse still, fallow, 
stunted and wholly undeveloped. There is cry- 
ing need of moral training in the public schools. 
Its need is so obvious to observant persons who 
come into contact with humanity in mixed masses 
as to call for little or no argument in its behalf. 

The portentous fact that crime and incorrigi- 
bility and flagrant moral turpitu/"e increase despite 
the increased facilities and greater efficiency of the 
public school system in itself argues something 
fundamentally awry or entirely lacking in the 
training of the children of the land. 

Millions of children are launched out into the 
world from the public schools without moral com- 
pass to guide them through the uncharted seas of 
life. Thousands drift upon the rocks and shoals 
of temptation and make moral shipwreck, mayhap 



PREFACE 9 

carrying down others with them through their 
vitiating influence. Into the maelstroms of vice 
other thousands plunge, Impelled by hereditary 
predisposition or acquired moral taint. 

The moral mortality of the country is appalling, 
especially among Its youth. It Is a cancerous con- 
dition that demands an heroic remedy. No salve 
or unguent or palliative will suffice to eradicate It. 
The disease Is deep-seated. Constitutional treat- 
ment Is Imperative. Vicious tendencies must be 
torn up, root and branch, In the child, if possible. 
Its moral nature must be carefully cultivated in Its 
school days. Incipient Immoralities must be 
pruned away; dwarfed and stunted moral percep- 
tions must be nurtured. The child must serve an 
apprenticeship In morals and the teacher must turn 
the apprentice over to Its parents and society as 
nearly a moral master as possible, with a firm 
grasp upon Its own moral nature and with a clear 
understanding of Its duties toward the world with 
which it must mingle and cope. This Is Ameri- 
can childhood's overshadowing need of the hour. 

For the purposes of the discussion of this vital 
need, the subject will be treated under four heads, 
namely: I. Need of Moral Training in the 
Public Schools; II. Scope and Methods of Moral 
Training; III. Qualifications for Teaching 
Morals; IV. Benefits of Moral Training — Gen- 
eral Remarks. 



MORAL TRAINING 
OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 



MORAL TRAINING 
OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 



NEED OF MORAL TRAINING IN THE PUBLIC 

SCHOOLS 

HON. ANDREW D. WHITE, former Am- 
bassador to Russia and first president of 
Cornell University, in a recent address, startled 
the country by a quasi-endorsement of lynching in 
certain instances of heinous crime. Mr. White 
said: 

" In the next year nine thousand people will be 
murdered in this country. As I stand here to-day 
I tell you that nine thousand people are doomed 
to death, with all the cruelty of the criminal heart 
and with no regard for home and family ties." 

It was this fearful menace which hangs like a 
Damoclean sword over the country that moved this 
eminent educator and conservative thinker boldly 
to assert: 

"Much may be said in favor of the quotation of 

13 



14 MORAL TRAINING 

the famous Englishman, Goldwin Smith, ^ There 
are some communities in the United States in 
which lynch law Is better than any other.' " 

Census figures are illuminating on this subject 
and as startling as Instructive. Eighty-five thou- 
sand persons accused of crimes or misdemeanors 
tenant the prisons of the United States and nine 
thousand homicides are committed every twelve- 
month. In round numbers, thirty-five thousand 
youth are in reform schools. And yet, turning 
to the school statistics, It Is seen that seventeen 
and one-half million pupils are enrolled in the pub- 
lic schools of the country; that the average at- 
tendance in every political division Is higher than 
ever before ; that there has been a general decrease 
in Illiteracy all along the line, from ocean to ocean, 
from the lakes to the gulf. Educational facilities 
were never so general and efficient, attendance at 
the public schools was never so large. Intelligence 
was never so widely disseminated, ignorance never 
showed so low a percentage. Truly encouraging 
figures these so far as they go. 

But there are more criminals now proportion- 
ately than ever before ; capital crimes are increas- 
ing In frightful ratio; incorrigibility and moral 
obliquity in children of tender years Is becoming 
appallingly prevalent. In a word, while illiteracy 
decreases, crime increases. It is an alarming fact 
that the cost entailed by criminality and delin- 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 15 

quency in the United States is estimated as ex- 
ceeding, by several million dollars, the aggregate 
sum expended for all forms of education in the 
country, public and private. 

The logical conclusion to which the thinker 
irresistibly is driven is, either that education is not 
a moralizing force or else that the present meth- 
ods of instruction are woefully defective as touch- 
ing the moral side of American youth. 

While the statement cannot be substantiated by 
actual statistics and figures, yet it is safe to assert 
that a very large percentage of the criminals and 
criminally inclined who are not illiterates received 
their only training in the public schools. At the 
doors of the public schools, then, in the main, must 
be laid the indictment of defective moral training. 
The whole trend of educational discussion at con- 
ventions, institutes, in teachers' reading circles and 
in the educational publications indicates a recog- 
nized lack of morale in the public schools and there 
is a perennial agitation for teachers better trained 
in the psychological aspects of their work. That 
phase of public school training which would em- 
brace moral teaching is admittedly the palpably 
weak phase of the public school system in general. 

Herein lies in a large measure the source of 
stagnation that feeds the cesspools of immorality 
and breeds crime. Multitudes of children, with 
moral natures untouched, are carried along in the 



1 6 MORAL TRAINING 

school course like so many ponies or dogs trained 
mechanically to do certain things so as to make a 
good showing when they enter the world-wide 
hippodrome of actual life, their trainers giving no 
definite heed to whether or not these boys and 
girls go out into society to become educated ras- 
cals and denizens of the underworld, or to be 
useful, upright men and women. There is a gen- 
eral lack of a public school spirit of honor and 
integrity which the teacher alone — the *' system," 
so to speak — can inaugurate and foster. Masses 
of children are permitted to " just grow up," not 
primarily immoral, but Topsies, moral-less, by 
default of moral instruction. 

This is not generally true of the higher insti- 
tutions of learning. Much is heard of " college 
spirit " and it is a blessed thing that such spirit 
exists. It is a moral bulwark that saves many an 
otherwise weak nature. Along this line President 
Thwing, of Western Reserve University, bears 
graphic testimony when he says : 

" Statements emerge at various times that the 
heads of reform movements find no small number 
of college graduates among the human derelicts 
and wreckage that float to their doorways. That 
there are college men who are bad, and who go to 
the bad, is not to be denied. But the number of 
them, or the proportion of them, is very much 
less than these interpretations indicate. 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 17 

" I have, in common with most college presi- 
dents, had a personal acquaintance with hundreds, 
or with thousands of college graduates. I have 
known them before they were graduates, and 
cared much for them. I have known them after 
they were college graduates, and also cared much 
for them. Their careers I have followed. Upon 
the evidence thus given, I want to bear testimony 
to the effect that seldom is it that a college gradu- 
ate goes to the bad, and also seldom is it that his 
life or career is inefficient. Less than five men 
out of a hundred become moral reprobates, and I 
think less than ten per cent, lead useless careers. 
Ninety-five men out of every hundred are 
reputable and ninety men out of every hundred 
are making some contribution of worth to the 
betterment of the community. 

" From the University of Maine, on the banks 
of the Penobscot, to the universities on the Golden 
Gate, college men are, as a body, clean, upright 
and efficient. 

" There is one cause which aids in bringing 
about this condition of integrity and success. 
Dissipation is usually, in certain stages, revolting 
to men of good taste. Dissipation is surrounded 
by, or consists of, certain types of nastiness. 
College men are supposed to be gentlemen. They 
embody the canons of good taste. Their intel- 
lectual character, even if not their nioral, develops 



1 8 MORAL TRAINING 

high appreciation. Therefore most forms of dis- 
sipation are to them repulsive. The atmosphere 
and the training of the academic life are contra- 
dictory to the temptation of appetite. For doing 
the duties, therefore, which are Involved In up- 
rightness and In efficiency, college men are more 
inclined than are some other men." 

Public Schools Only Nursery of Millions. 

It Is no exaggeration to assert that the public 
schools of the country are the only nursery that 
millions of children ever know. Children in mul- 
titudes either have no home life or else have that 
which Is worse than no home life — the baleful 
influence of immoral or morally Indifferent par- 
ents. In the congested tenements of the great 
cities, amid the alien flotsam and jetsam, which 
has been cast adrift from Europe and Asia and 
has been beached on the shores of America, this 
appalling destitution of moral Influence and senti- 
ment stalks hand In hand with material destitution. 
But not alone to the miserable " Black Holes " of 
the great cities Is this dearth of moral Influence 
confined. It may be found in the smaller urban 
communities and even the most favored rural dis- 
tricts are not strangers to moral as well as material 
squalor. Every portion of the land brings forth 
its perennial crop of Ignorant, debased, dissipated 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 19 

parents who foist upon society bevies of children 
predisposed by vitiated heredity to immorality and 
crime and with inherited tendencies aggravated by 
daily example in the home from those to whom 
they naturally look for guidance. 

It is from these cesspools of moral pollution 
that the public schools receive streams of moral- 
less childhood which imposes a tremendous re- 
sponsibility, because the public school is the only 
possible morally-purifying fountain through which 
these streams of childhood will flow before passing 
from their morally arid homes out into the de- 
moralizing world to fall more deeply into the 
slime of crime and vice if not buoyed by some 
strong Influence. The public school is the only 
moral hope for vast numbers of such children. 
The churches do not and cannot reach them. 
They are beyond the pale of practical religious 
influence. Should home mission effort succeed in 
reaching them It would be only with a rope of 
sand, a beacon light that would shine but a moment 
and would then be extinguished by the cruel blasts 
of environment, making rescue from that source 
well-nigh hopeless. 

Upon the public schools chiefly is the problem 
thrust. It is there these children will receive the 
only training the mass of them ever will get. No 
other school will they ever enter. Indeed, it is 
necessary that the State should step In and force 



20 MORAL TRAINING 

indifferent parents to permit their offspring to 
avail themselves of even this comparatively 
meager source of aliment for their higher natures 
by compulsory education laws. 

The fact that millions of children are destined 
by circumstances never to pass through educa- 
tional institutions higher than or other than the 
public school and that the children most vitally in 
need of moral training make up a large portion of 
this great army of future citizens, is pregnant with 
fearful possibilities unless the public school is 
equipped and prepared to answer the Macedonian 
cry for moral aid from this source. 



Its Economic Phase. 

From the economic standpoint, moral training 
in the public schools is a manifest necessity. As 
hereinbefore observed, statistics show that crime 
and incorrigibility cost more, by millions of dol- 
lars, than does the whole American system of edu- 
cation, public and private. From the material 
viewpoint, therefore, if proper moral instruction 
and influence are given in the public schools, from 
whose walls go out the greater number of the 
youth who become incorrigibles and later, crimi- 
nals, the frightful saturnalia of crime and vice 
inevitably will decrease and with the decrease in 
the number of criminals will come a corresponding 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 21 

saving in the entailed cost of criminality. The 
great sums expended for the capture, incarcer- 
ation, conviction and maintenance of criminals is 
not the only costly feature of the prevalence of 
criminality. There is the added positive public 
burden of caring for the worse than widowed and 
orphaned families of the criminals; the widows 
and orphans of the victims of homicides; and the 
currents of insanity and pauperism which flow in 
the wake of crime, resultant therefrom. 

Still another indirect and negative source of loss 
to the commonwealth is the fact that the lives of 
men and women, boys and girls, who, if upright, 
industrious and law-abiding, would be engaged in 
some self-supporting and productive industry, are 
neutralized by crime. Adding to the adult prison- 
ers of the land the youths in reformatories, the 
victims of homicides and the persons thrown into 
insanity or pauperism as a direct result of crime, 
fully one hundred and fifty thousand individuals 
annually are withdrawn from the wage-earning, 
self-supporting army of producers. This in itself 
is a startling item. 

But there is another economic phase more im« 
portant than that pertaining to mere material 
economy. The protection of society against the 
criminal is the problem, ever insolvable, which 
confronts the legislatures, the intricate machinery 
of the courts, the prisons, the reformatories and 



22 MORAL TRAINING 

all the penal and reform institutions of the coun- 
try. There is the startling presage that within 
the coming twelvemonth nine thousand human 
souls will be hurled into eternity by the bullet or 
knife or bludgeon of the assassin, and that the 
number will increase in succeeding twelvemonths 
unless some powerful crime-deterring influence is 
set In motion. The protection of life and prop- 
erty against criminal ravage is a mighty problem 
and, let It be repeated, the burden of relief must 
fall upon the public schools In providing the deter- 
rent, through moral training. 

Again, the criminal influence is by no means a 
negligible menace. Every crime Is a public peril. 
Every outbreaking criminal deed sets in motion a 
wave of moral blight that sweeps over society with 
its baneful influence — the more atrocious the 
deed the more baneful and blighting and the 
wider sweeps the demoralizing wave. It is known 
that peculiarly horrible crimes are quickly imi- 
tated, oftentimes In places distant from the scene 
of the original atrocity. Thus otherwise harm- 
less natures often give way under the impulse of 
an Influence toward criminality of peculiar enor- 
mity and not only does the unhappy Individual 
thus Influenced suffer, but some member of society, 
unscathed of such influence. It may be, meets a 
tragic fate because of it. Crime ramifies in its 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 23 

effects and Influences and, directly or indirectly, 
deleteriously affects every stratum of society. 

Its Civic Phase. 

The need of sturdy, honest, upright, fearless 
citizenship in the United States was never more 
keenly felt than today. As never before the weal 
of the country demands 

" Men who their duties know, 
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain." 

The bad citizenship of the good citizen is not 
only generally recognized and deplored in this 
country but has become proverbial abroad. 
Amid the simple conditions of the New England 
colonies, when population was so sparse every 
man, of his own knowledge, could take a census 
of his colony; when the chief issue was the ele- 
mental one of how to protect life against the rude 
blasts of nature and the ruder incursions of the 
savage, the democracy which found its expression 
in the town meeting sufficed and citizenship was 
the essence of simplicity. But complex problems 
and multifarious civic duties confront the Ameri- 
can citizen of to-day. 

While problems multiply and thicken in com- 
plexity and while civic duties much more abound 
than in the days of simple pioneer living and a not 



24 MORAL TRAINING 

numerous population, yet the individual is as much 
a civic factor to-day as in the dawn of our national 
existence. It is a manifest truism that every man 
is a civic power for good or ill. There is no neu- 
tral ground. The nation in any analysis is but an 
aggregation of individual entities. And the 
broadest statesmanship and wisest publicism unite 
on the simple yet all-important truth that the 
perpetuity of the country and its beneficent insti- 
tutions rests upon the high general average of 
morality and intelligence. Ex-President Roose- 
velt is one of the most consistent and persistent 
exponents of this truth which he epitomizes as 
follows : 

'' We must strive to bring about clean living and 
right thinking. We appreciate that the things of 
the body are important; but we appreciate also 
that the things of the soul are immeasurably more 
important. The foundation stone of national life 
is, and ever must be, the high individual character 
of the average citizen." 

Here unfolds the province of the public school 
— to inculcate the lessons that make for good 
citizenship. The desideratum of good govern- 
ment will not come from intelligence alone nor 
from marked physical superiority. A moralized 
citizenship is the sine qua non of national bene- 
faction. Moral instruction in the public schools 
must be the leaven to leaven the whole lump of 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 25 

citizenship. One of the most inspiring features 
of common school instruction should be this privi- 
lege of giving to the nation the corpuscular ele- 
ment to enrich its very life blood. The country's 
extremity with its vitiated blood of bad citizenship 
should be seized upon as the glorious opportunity 
of the public school. 

Primary Object of Education, 

The process of orderly " drawing out," which 
education elementally implies, is too generally re- 
stricted in its application to the mental, or at most 
to the mental and physical, in the child. In the 
broadening educational horizon of the twentieth 
century the end and aim of education is not to 
make of children animated knowledge-boxes and 
peregrinating encyclopedias, but to draw out and 
develop and symmetrize their three-fold natures. 
If there be no moral training in the public schools 
and children grow up, because of this lack of 
moral development, to lives of crime and shame, 
the whole object of education, so far as they indi- 
vidually are concerned and so far as society in 
general is concerned, has been defeated. The 
mentally and physically trained but morally un- 
trained youth, turned loose upon society, is like 
unto an infant given a firebrand amid the draperies 
and combustibles of the nursery and left to itself 



26 MORAL TRAINING 

to ply the element of destruction In Its Infantile 
Ignorance. Such untrained youths carry unwit- 
tingly the Instruments of their own destruction and 
of resultant danger to the society of which they 
are designed to be ornaments and conservators. 

What though multiplied millions are poured out 
annually for the support of public schools, If the 
product of those schools be a juvenile army with 
mental wits sharpened but with moral sensibilities 
dormant or blunted — an army without moral 
banners, ready to be swept by demoralizing winds 
of Influence under the black banner of vice and 
crime. All the money and effort expended upon 
their training are thus rendered nugatory. If 
moral training be neglected the dereliction not 
only recoils upon the individual child thus robbed 
of Its birthright but it acts and reacts detrimentally 
and disastrously upon society. 



Public School a Democracy. 

Each and every public school in the land, no 
matter how humble, Is a republic In miniature. 
So strikingly does this Idea appeal to educators, in 
many city schools model mimic governments, 
municipal and national, are conducted under the 
supervision of the pupils themselves. In the 
schools exist, In the main, the functions of the 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 27 

principal Institutions of general civic government. 
Here also prevail In embryo the virtues and vices 
of the larger sphere of the citizen. How funda- 
mentally important Is It, therefore, that these 
embryonic citizens should have their feet set upon 
the king's highway of civic virtue ! Here In this 
republic, bounded by four walls, may be and 
should be instilled the virtues that will fit children 
In a large measure for the responsibilities of citi- 
zenship. Here public and private honesty and 
honor may and should be impressed; here the 
noxious weeds of selfishness, deceit, craft, the 
domineering spirit, idleness, talebearing and gos- 
sip, hate, envy, lying, may be checked in their 
growth In the fallow moral nature of the child and 
in their stead may be planted the antithetic virtues 
that will tend to spring up and root out the poi- 
sonous growth and bring forth abundant fruit of 
good citizenship in adult years. The public 
school teacher Is chief magistrate over a sover- 
eignty where the highest moral good of the minia- 
ture commonwealth should be one of the very 
foremost objects. Such a teacher. In a way, is a 
counterpart of Moses, promulgating wholesome 
moral laws, and of Alfred the Great and all the 
wise and beneficent rulers who have administered 
laws for the highest good of all. 



28 MORAL TRAINING 

Inherent Worth of a Human SouL 

One of the primal claims in behalf of moral 
training may be based upon the Inherent worth 
of the individual child. The weight of responsi- 
bility impresses deeply every conscientious teacher 
when it is considered that the destiny of immortal 
souls in large measure hangs upon the training 
given and Influence wielded In the schoolroom. 
" What will a man give in exchange for his soul? 'V 
comes the divine interrogatory that has no possible 
estimable answer. There is no material consid- 
eration which can be put in the balance and 
weighed over against one human soul, although 
tenanted, It may be, In the most humble and re- 
pulsive fleshly edifice. Expense, effort, sacrifice, 
years of preparation on the part of the teacher — 
all these are not worthy to be compared with the 
intrinsic value of the Immortal part of the meanest 
and least promising child that presents Its lean, 
hungry, attenuated but receptive nature to be fed 
and nurtured in its mental, moral and physical 
aspects. It Is a sad commentary on the public 
school system of the United States that provision 
was not made long ago for supplying moral aliment 
to the youth of the land. 

The incongruity of building up an edifice on a 
foundation of sand, liable to topple and fall and 
not only be destroyed Itself but ruin other edifices 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 29 

in its collapse, seems so palpable in the matter of 
training children, the marvel is that so great a 
mission, so vital a part of the educational archi- 
tecture should not only be indifferently regarded 
but wholly ignored oftentimes. What profits it 
to rear with infinite pains and through an elabor- 
ate and costly governmental enginery, the frame- 
work of young manhood and womanhood, using 
only their mental and physical capabilities as 
structural material, while that which every con- 
scientious educator and every thoughtful man and 
woman must recognize as the essential found- 
ation of all good in education -— the moral devel- 
opment of the individual — is left out? What 
result more natural than that such a structure 
should topple and become a menace as soon as the 
demoralizing influences of life beat upon it in the 
inevitable tempests which sweep every human 
structure? How long must it be until the stone 
of moral training which these educational builders 
have put at nought shall become the head of the 
corner ? 

As between the educated criminal and the ig- 
norant lawbreaker the former is a far greater 
menace to society. Not only is the educated 
criminal more capable of committing graver crimes 
than his illiterate brother in crime, but society has 
been mulcted of the time and effort and money 
spent in his education and is subject to the shock 



30 MORAL TRAINING 

and demoralizing Impress which a conspicuous 
career, wrecked In crime, gives. To what pur- 
pose Is the youth taught the elements of chemistry, 
in the line of his mental development, if infor- 
mation thus gleaned, not guided and controlled 
by a moral helm, is turned to the criminal purpose 
of compounding an insidious poison to commit 
murder without discovery, or to devising a chemi- 
cal solution that will reduce forgery to an exact 
science? 

The public schools owe It to each and every in- 
dividual child In the land firmly to plant the found- 
ations of elementary education on the solid rock 
of moral truth. The obligation Is due primarily 
to the child Itself, whose eternal destiny Is largely 
in the keeping of the teacher. The debt Is owing, 
secondarily, to society in general, whose sponsor 
the teacher Is in preparing the child for useful, 
honorable life. 

The foregoing are but a few of the more cogent 
reasons why there should be moral training of the 
millions of youths of the land who will never ma- 
triculate In educational institutions higher than the 
public schools. The need of such training is 
patent, pressing; the demand for It does not rest 
upon fanatical zeal or sectarian whim. It is most 
eloquently attested by the census tables of crime, 
incorrigibility, pauperism and Insanity; every po- 
lice court In every city, town and village In the 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 31 

land Is a testimonial to the need; the blood of the 
victim of every homicide cries out from the ground 
in appeal for training calculated to hold in leash 
the fearful passions which, untrained, plunge 
through the gradations of crime to the gory 
depths of assassination. Christianity and en- 
lightened civilization would hail such instruction 
as the surest harbinger of "on earth peace, good 
will toward men." 



II 

SCOPE AND METHODS OF MORAL TRAINING 

4t^Tr^RAIN Up a child in the way he should go 
X and when he is old he will not depart 
from it." The sacred writer not only impresses 
the obligation to teach morality but gives comfort- 
ing assurance that the child instructed systemati- 
cally " in the way he should go " will not depart 
from his teaching *' when he is old." This is at 
once a solemn obligation and an encouraging 
promise; a manifest duty and an assured reward 
for the faithful performance thereof. 

It were vain to argue that every child well- 
taught morally will keep strictly to the path of 
rectitude throughout life. There are so many 
adverse influences with which moral natures must 
combat, so many snares and pitfalls for the un- 
wary, so many weaknesses of heredity or tem- 
perament which beset the individual that in many 
cases even the wisest and best of moral training by 
parents and teachers may not suffice to sustain the 
child when it shall have " put away childish 
things " and gone forth in its maturer years to 
meet temptations and responsibilities. The gen- 

32 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 33 

cral truth of the sacred adjuration and the reward 
of its fulfillment, literally, however, are attested 
on every hand and have borne the test of the ages. 

So universally is childhood recognized as the 
ductile, impressionable, habit-forming period of 
life — the age when most lasting impressions are 
most readily made — this phase of the subject of 
child-training may be passed over with but a word. 
That the aged remember vividly the scenes and 
incidents of their extreme youth, things in them- 
selves oftentimes the most trivial in character, but 
emphasizes the indelibility of impressions made 
upon the fresh, retentive nature of the child. 

At birth the child's moral nature is as a blank 
tablet, an unwritten page susceptible to the slight- 
est and most delicate exterior influence. Here 
and there upon that page may be the blotches of 
hereditary moral taint which later in life will blur 
the most perfect moral influence which may come 
into contact therewith. As the child comes into 
being it may be said to be non-moral — that is, 
negatively, without any fixed moral impressions or 
impulses. But from the hour of birth begins that 
rapid growth and expansion and absorption under 
exterior influence which in a few short years is 
destined to make of the youth an intelligent moral 
being. 

To be effective, moral training must be deep 
and sincere. The youth superficially trained in 



34 MORAL TRAINING 

morals may go out into society with his moral re- 
pulsiveness concealed under a polished exterior, 
but the result Is only a thin veneer over a rotten 
or decaying framework. The poultice of polish 
that heals the surface leaves the festering sore 
within, liable at any time to break out Into moral 
recrudescence. 

Webster defines '* morals " thus: 

" The doctrine or practice of the duties of life; 
manner of living as regards right and wrong; con- 
duct; behavior." 

" Moral " as an adjective is defined: 

*' Pertaining to those intentions and actions of 
which right and wrong, virtue and vice, are predi- 
cated, or the rules by which such Intentions and 
actions ought to be directed; relating to the prac- 
tice, manners or conduct of men as social beings in 
relation to each other, as respects right and wrong 
so far as they are properly subject to rules." 

The definition, analyzed, discloses a twofold 
duty binding upon the Individual — right living 
and thinking on the part of the individual as his 
moral duty to his better self; right thinking and 
acting toward mankind in general as his moral 
social duty. From this it is seen that proper 
moral teaching of children comprehends incul- 
cating the rules by which the child is to develop 
itself so as best to subserve its own happiness, 
health and well-being, this development to be 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 35 

symmetrical, so as to equip the child for the 
larger duties and responsibilities of life, involving 
Its relations toward mankind, as a social being. 

Morality in the child properly has a distinct 
intrinsic and extrinsic existence and manifestation. 
Children primarily need to be taught to respect 
themselves, to keep their own minds and bodies 
and moral impulses pure; this Idea thoroughly 
rooted, the larger duty toward society will impress 
itself in the orderly development of the moral 
nature. The child's first lesson Is Its moral duty 
to Itself and this lesson should be deeply implanted. 
Then in the evolution of training as to moral duty 
will come in natural sequence the comprehensive 
grasp of duty toward parents, brothers and sis- 
ters, schoolmates and companions, and the Cre- 
ator. For, avoiding sectarianism, every child 
reverently should be led to '' Remember now thy 
Creator In the days of thy youth while the evil 
days come not." 

Virile Moral Teaching. 

Moral Instruction in the public schools, to be 
effective, must be vitalized, earnest, compre- 
hensible. Children should not be fed upon over- 
done, underdone, or Illy-prepared and indigestible 
moral food ; the resultant dyspepsia will be a veri- 
table moral plague and the last estate of children 



36 MORAL TRAINING 

so taught will be worse than the first. Stereo- 
typed, parrot-like, hackneyed, dogmatic or homi- 
letic teaching is a menace to morals. Like every 
other phase of teaching it is Impossible to lay 
down empirical rules as to methods of training in 
morals; but, in general, the cravings and suscepti- 
bilities of the moral nature of the child should be 
gauged and instruction should be given in such 
manner and to such extent as will Insure agreeable 
receptivity on the part of the child, and thus pro- 
mote the digestive process which will turn the 
carefully prepared and properly administered food 
into aliment to nourish and develop the moral 
being. 

" Men must be taught as if you taught them 
not '' is a truism which applies with particular 
force to the realm of childhood. It will never 
do to reduce moral teaching to a text-book basis. 
Whenever moral lessons are set down alongside 
arithmetic, to be learned by rote, a revulsion in 
child nature will be superinduced fatal to every 
beneficent aim of moral training. The giving of 
moral nourishment must in a measure be so sea- 
soned and sugar-coated as to render it not only 
palatable but inviting, and the child-nature, 
if possible, must be so prepared for the reception 
of the more vital moral truths that the partaking 
thereof will come as much a matter of course and 
with the same sharpened appetite as If It were a 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 37 

feast of dainties tempting an empty stomach. 
Only as this method is approximated will be in- 
duced that healthful assimilation which consum- 
mates moral training. If the stomach be gorged 
with an unseasonable mass of indigestibles, the 
child's physical body not only fails to assimilate, 
but the outraged stomach revolts and makes itself 
painfully felt. Equally true is it that if the child 
is crammed full of indigestible moral truths, illy- 
prepared and ignorantly or indifferently adminis- 
tered by the teacher, the moral nature not only 
will not assimilate the gorge but there will ensue 
a painful revulsion which will bode ill for subse- 
quent efforts to develop the moral nature of the 
child. 

Historians relate how Lycurgus withdrew from 
his people to Crete and there formed an intimacy 
with Thales, a poet of great abilities, whom he 
engaged so far in his designs as to persuaHe him 
to go and settle at Sparta and, by poems suited to 
the purpose, endeavor to prepare the minds of 
the people for receiving those alterations in gov- 
ernment and manners which Lycurgus hoped he 
might, one day, have it in his power to propose to 
their consideration. Accordingly, when Lycurgus 
returned to Sparta he had already, by insensible 
degrees, prepared the minds of the people; for, 
while listening to the poems of Thales they had 
been imbibing gradually sentiments favorable to 



38 MORAL TRAINING 

the plans which Lycurgus had in contemplation. 
By proceeding in a gentle and cautious manner 
Lycurgus was thus enabled to bring about distinct 
reforms that otherwise would have been impos- 
sible without violence and revolution. 

The lesson in this for the teacher who essays to 
train in morals is obvious. Children cannot be 
driven back into the moral Eden. They must be 
led by ways so inviting and agreeable that flowers 
will conceal the ruggedness of the path. This 
idea, however, should not be abused. Moral 
sturdiness must be inculcated. Teaching must not 
be made so attractive as to become false, flaccid 
and insipid. The proper proportions of '* blood 
and iron " must be in the moral compound upon 
which the child is fed. Discrimination, tact and 
keen insight into child nature will commend to 
the teacher the happy median method of making 
innately rugged moral truths acceptable and as- 
similable to the child. 

Elemental Moral Traimng[. 

The homeliest phase of the teacher's work has 
its possibilities of moral instruction. The sim- 
plest and most elemental incidents and circum- 
stances of the schoolroom, of child life, lend 
themselves admirably to the inculcation of moral 
truth. No attempt is made here to lay down ab- 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 39 

solute rules or to outline In any degree of com- 
pleteness the sources from which moral Instruc- 
tion may be garnered. But the humblest school 
room has as rich possibilities for moral gleanings 
as the field of Boaz presented to Ruth In the way 
of ripened grain. From the most common actions 
of the pupils habits may be developed by the 
teacher, through her deft training, which in them- 
selves will become a fruitful source of moral 
growth. Orderliness, neatness, respect for elders, 
thoughtfulness, unselfishness, honesty, truthful- 
ness, may be taught every day and every hour in 
the routine work of the school in the relations of 
pupils to teacher and to each other. The im- 
portance of small actions in the formation of 
habits, the necessity of keeping Impulses pure, the 
absolutism of habit — all these and their multi- 
form suggestions and applications the teacher may 
emphasize by methods which occasion will dictate 
as best. 

It is a sublime thought that should give en- 
thusiasm and ardor to every conscientious teacher 
that in the homely routine of the school may be 
developed the most momentous moral truths in 
the universe. Here aptly applies Shakespeare's 
beautiful thought on " the uses of adversity " ; — 



" Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head." 



40 MORAL TRAINING 

Amid bare walls and floors, ugly desks and un- 
adorned envlronlngs of thousands of schools lie 
the precious jewels of moral truth within reach 
of the poorest and most unpromising child if the 
teacher but be the skilled lapidary to polish these 
gems of truth and present them to the receptive 
minds and hearts of the children. 

While, as heretofore observed, sectarianism 
never should enter the public schools in any guise, 
yet accountability to God should be a part of the 
teaching in morals. The advantages of upright 
living hkewise should be emphasized. In the 
teacher's own way and by suitable illustrations, 
the truth should be made manifest that " honesty 
is the best policy"; that "righteousness exalteth 
a nation but sin is a reproach to any people " — 
and here the application should be individualized; 
that " a good name is rather to be chosen than 
great riches " ; that an untroubled conscience is 
a better asset than a plethoric purse filled with ill- 
gotten gains. As sordidity and sensual artifici- 
ality are common besetments of present-day 
Americans, these demoralizing tendencies should 
be especially combatted in the child nature. 

Teach Personal Responsibility. 

The teacher may lay the foundation of a liberal 
moral education by impressing upon each pupil 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 41 

personal responsibility in the successful conduct 
of the school. Every teacher comes to realize 
the value of the personal equation of pupils in 
governing the school. Nothing so appeals to the 
pride and better impulses of boys and girls as to 
be put upon their good behavior — to be made to 
feel that the success or failure of an adult upon 
whom they look with respect lies largely with them 
individually. To the degree that the teacher 
stimulates this rivalry among pupils as to who shall 
do most and best toward making the school work 
in all its phases a success, to that extent not only 
will the school become practically self-governing, 
but the pupils unconsciously will have acquired 
some of the most inestimable civic and social vir- 
tues — orderliness, respect for constituted author- 
ity, helpfulness, magnanimity, self-control and 
sense of personal responsibility. Judicious use of 
the means thus put within the reach of every 
teacher not only will prove a wholesome course In 
morals, but a valuable assistance In the way of 
" governing " the school, which is the bane of 
many teachers' lives. Discipline largely may be 
placed upon a basis of pride and honor by the 
teacher so that the pupils will come to govern 
themselves In a large measure and the school thus 
will become virtually autonomous. It Is needless 
to dilate upon the beneficial effects of such con- 
ditions In the school upon both teacher and pupils. 



42 MORAL TRAINING 

With the evolution of moral training schools can 
be placed more and more upon an honor basis, so 
far as discipline is concerned, to the marked ad- 
vantage of all schools. 

Practical Moral Teaching. 

The fault of much of present-day teaching lies 
In its vagueness, abstruseness and attenuated gen- 
erality. If moral training Is to be of lasting bene- 
fit It must be made distinctively practical. It is no 
field for the mere theorist or the visionaire to 
enter. The homely saying that ^' hell is paved 
with good intentions " might well be supplemented 
with the assertion that much of the infernal as- 
phaltum Is also furnished from ill-considered, 
purposeless moral cramming. To a certain ex- 
tent the Squeers method must prevail in effective 
moral training. When the child has learned to 
spell and define moral duty there must be coupled 
with this Instruction the impulse to perform moral 
duties as they present themselves. 

A form of teaching morals open to vitiating 
abuse Is that which holds out a material, tangible 
reward for every right action the child performs. 
This Is liable to become disastrous to all moral 
ends. The teacher should endeavor to teach 
goodness for goodness' sake and so far as possible 
wean the child away from expectation of immedi- 



1 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 43 

ate, material reward for every right action and 
impulse. Many teachers are in danger of build- 
ing upon quicksand in this respect and only dis- 
cover their error after the child has awakened to 
the fact that it has been flim-flammed in its moral 
teaching by being promised recompense of a na- 
ture which does not materialize. Your twentieth 
century youth is by nature an intense materialist 
and generally is acute beyond his years in deter- 
mining the sincerity of the teacher and the truth 
or falsity of teachings as affecting material re- 
wards or portended punishments. 

Teach Moral Courage, 

In no aspect is moral training more sadly 
needed in this country than in inspiring moral 
courage. This virtue generally and conspicu- 
ously either is lacking or feebly developed. 
Through false or indifferent training, or from lack 
of training, masses of boys and girls grow up to 
the years of manhood and womanhood spineless 
so far as moral courage is concerned. These, be- 
cause of their moral cowardice, so deteriorate and 
are so " driven about by every wind of doctrine," 
simply because it is popular, as to be a positive 
peril to orderly society. Moral stability has been 
belittled or Ignored or promulgated in such a milk- 
and-water manner by teachers as to leave no im- 



44 MORAL TRAINING 

pression on the natures of multitudes of youth. 
On the other hand, physical daring and prowess 
have been glorified inordinately in the schools, in 
the homes and in books and newspapers until we 
are in danger of becoming a nation of bullies and 
braggarts. 

It is known even to the wayfaring man that 
many a man who has the courage to face frowning 
batteries and the most fearful physical danger un- 
daunted, will shrink and cower before a sneer. 
Strong, persistent, wholesome training of youth 
in the rudiments of moral manliness and courage 
is a nation-wide necessity. To be independent, to 
stand firmly for the right if need be in the face 
of sneers, insults, misrepresentations; to live so 
as to be above just cause for reproach but if re- 
proach come to have the moral sinew and fiber so 
well developed they will stand firm and unshaken 
amid the tumult of vituperation — this is the kind 
of training every child should receive. The 
pages of history and biography are rich with shin- 
ing examples of the highest type of moral courage 
and afford an exhaustless fountain upon which the 
teacher may draw for the edification and interest 
of the child. The discriminating teacher, without 
straining the point, may show the child that the 
type of courage that impelled Henry Clay to ex- 
claim *' I would rather be right than be Presi- 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 45 

dent," and to act accordingly, Is extremely rare 
and as admirable as rare. 

There are biographies of eminent Americans 
which are as fascinating to youth as romance and 
which in themselves teach grand moral lessons. 
For instance, there may be put before the pupils 
the physical courage and moral cowardice of 
Benedict Arnold, forming a repellant antithesis to 
the group of Revolutionary heroes which Includes 
such physically and morally courageous men as 
George Washington and Nathan Hale. 

A conspicuous fault of many school histories 
and biographical works Is the tendency to glorify 
the warrior and wars out of all normal and just 
proportion. The fame of Alexander and Caesar 
and Napoleon thrills the heart of youth, but the 
moral effect of hero worship in Idealizing such 
characters of history Is very questionable. Youth 
Is Impulsively extreme and does not weigh motives 
and discriminate between the good and the evil of 
the great. The halo of glorification that Indis- 
criminately Is thrown around the genius of the 
battlefield by some perfervid historians Is not cal- 
culated to foster the spirit of peace and order and 
justice In the natures of the young. 

While giving due meed of praise and rank to 
military genius, the teaching given should empha- 
size the beneficent achievements of inventors, ex- 



46 MORAL TRAINING 

plorers, statesmen, authors and philanthropists 
who have contributed largely toward making the 
world better. Franklin toying with the lightning 
through his kite ; Watt gathering the fundamental 
idea of a momentous invention from watching the 
steam tilt the lid of a tea kettle; Newton grasping 
the idea of gravitation from seeing an apple fall, 
sublime suggestion which the poet has set to 
rhyme : 

" That very law that molds a tear 
And bids it trickle from its source, 
That law preserves the earth a sphere 
And guides the planets in their course "— - 

All these fascinate youth like the weavings of the 
romancer. The achievements of men who have 
struggled and wrought to make the world better 
should be exalted, not fanatically and dispropor- 
tionately, but judiciously, soberly. Children are 
quick to grasp and sympathize with tales of hard- 
ships and struggles against adversity; the seeds of 
morality may be sown with success in the fertile 
soil of receptive, interested minds where concrete 
examples from history, faithfully portrayed, are 
held up to their mental gaze. 

It is high time that children should be made to 
believe and realize that " peace hath her victories 
no less renowned than war"; that heroes have 
lived in all ages who never trod the crimson path 
of martial glory; that the world is much more in 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 47 

need of '' men, high-minded men " who will be 
heroic in peace, who have the moral courage to 
meet and conquer adversity and to do the right at 
all hazards, than it needs " mighty men of re- 
nown " to lead its armies and command its navies. 

Sources of Moral Instruction. 

Sources of moral instruction are embarrassingly 
numerous. Newspapers, books, magazines, text- 
books, nature, the daily routine of school work, 
social relations of pupils with each other — these 
are but a few of the fields teeming with possi- 
bilities. 

Graphic lessons of a moral nature may be im- 
pressed from momentous events of current history 
as recorded in the better class of newspapers. 
The San Francisco disaster, for instance, had 
manifold teachings, such as the innate charity and 
magnanimity of the mass of humanity when 
aroused by suffering and destitution; the splendid 
courage of whole communities in the face of al- 
most overwhelming disaster, and like patent 
lessons. 

Moral teaching is best subserved by dwelling 
upon the beauties and advantages of pursuing a 
goodly career rather than emphasizing the re- 
pulsiveness and disastrous consequences of evil 
living. In this connection arises a duty all teachers 



48 MORAL TRAINING 

owe the children under their guidance — to shield 
them against the sensational newspaper. This is 
coming to be one of the recognized demoralizing 
agencies of the country. Mr. Arthur J. Pillsbury, 
Secretary of the State Board of Examiners of 
California, made a tour of investigation of some 
eighty reformatory and eleemosynary institutions 
of the East and middle West and, reporting upon 
the chief causes which conspire to fill such insti- 
tutions, he has this to say of the harmful influence 
of '* yellow journalism ^^ : 

" It is perfectly clear to sociologists that the 
increase of criminality, the world over, and espe- 
cially in this country, is largely due to the power 
of suggestion of the ' yellow ' press. Sensational 
papers are mainly taken by persons most likely to 
be influenced by the power of suggestion, and the 
reading of graphic reports of murders, suicides, 
robberies, domestic scandals, etc., day after day, 
year after year, cannot fail of producing untoward 
results in minds of that character. It has been 
observed that atrocities of every kind, blazoned 
in the columns of such papers, are imitated shortly 
after, incident by incident. Time was when the 
dime novel was charged with many heinous of- 
fenses against social well-being, but how much 
greater the evil now that daily novels of as worth- 
less character are hawked about the streets at one 
cent per copy ! The ' yellow ' papers not only 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 49 

use a deal of fiction in their daily grist, but they 
tell whatever truth they do tell in the language of 
fiction so that it tastes like fiction in the mouths 
of their readers and has the same influence upon 
their overwrought nervous systems." 

Schools Civic Barracks. 

The nation, ever mindful of the advice of 
Washington — in time of peace to prepare for 
war — maintains at the highest possible state of 
efficiency an elaborate military and naval estab- 
lishment. Not one whit less important for the 
maintenance of the honor and glory of the nation 
is the vast civic establishment represented in the 
public schools of the country. Every school 
house is a civic barracks. It is of the utmost im- 
portance that from these barracks should be 
turned out armies of youth trained in moral duties 
and capabilities, to fight the nation's battles for 
honesty, uprightness, clean living, right thinking 
and just, helpful governing. Ill will fare the land 
if the means are neglected for the training of its 
youth to become moral, industrious, law-abiding 
citizens. As the public school is the chief recruit- 
ing station of citizenship, the vital necessity of 
maintaining the high moral standard of the re- 
cruits thus turned out is apparent. 



Ill 

QUALIFICATIONS FOR TEACHING MORALS 

LIKE the poet, the good teacher Is born, not 
made ; and however blessed with tact and tal- 
ent for teaching, no one is so abundantly endowed 
as not to be better equipped for imparting In- 
struction by themselves undergoing a thorough 
disciplinary course in training. Notwithstanding 
the persistent crusade for trained teachers for the 
public schools there may be found to-day all too 
many, usurping the place of real teachers, who 
have had no adequate training for their work and 
who cannot, in the nature of things, be equipped 
for its delicate responsibilities. While mental in- 
struction of children calls for the most careful 
preparation on the part of the teacher, what must 
be said of the preparation demanded of him or 
her who would undertake to " train up a child in 
the way he should go " morally? 

For the work of molding symmetrical moral 
vessels out of the raw and dissimilar clay of the 
schoolroom the teacher needs not only the vital 
teachings of the best psychological writers for 

50 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 51 

guidance, but there are many essential qualifi- 
cations that must be acquired outside the well- 
beaten psychological paths blazed by books. 
Systematic thought, observation of child-nature 
first hand, intense earnestness and devotion to the 
work In hand, diagnosis of each individual child 
and application of remedies to meet the peculiar 
moral need of each one — herein lies the broad 
and yet specific province of the successful teacher 
of morals. 

As the moral physician of the juvenile com- 
munity the teacher must maintain an ample 
apothecary shop, with reserve stores of special 
knowledge, skill and dexterity. The teacher 
must determine, with the quickness and accuracy 
of the experienced physician, what the ailment Is 
and what treatment to apply. This child's moral 
sensibilities are blunted by heredity — here the 
alterative, the tonic; there a youth has suffered a 
wound of pride from a thoughtless playmate 
which, if not healed promptly, will become an 
angry sore of hate — there the teacher's moral 
emollient Is demanded; yonder a boy physically 
robust and ebullient with animal spirits, as full of 
mischief as a June rosebush of bees — here the 
mild sedative is demanded to curb to moderation 
the mischievousness which, if not held In bounds, 
will lead the boy Into some current of flagitious 
moral transgression ; and so on through the whole 



52 MORAL TRAINING 

moral pharmacopoeia, remedies may be found of 
known virtue in moral therapeutics. 

« 

Teacher^ s Character and Personality. 

The public school teacher should have a clear 
passport as to moral character — a character in 
which are conspicuously developed the cardinal 
virtues which are to be instilled into the pupils. 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus defines history as 
" philosophy teaching by example." This 
graphic definition, personified, may not inaptly 
be applied to the teacher — a moral philosopher 
teaching by example. The influence of the char- 
acter and personality of the teacher upon the pupil 
is beyond calculation and ramifies amazingly. 
Therefore is it a prime necessity that the teacher 
should be self-poised, optimistic, patient, sympa- 
thetic, industrious, neat, orderly — in a word, not 
only the moral exemplar but the moral inspiration 
of the whole school. There is an indefinable mag- 
netic moral influence that teachers exert upon chil- 
dren. A clean, wholesome, cheerful mind and 
heart sending out magnetic waves from the teach- 
er's desk beget a like state among the pupils. This 
influence of teachers, manifested in similitude of 
actions and impulses on the part of pupils, is 
strikingly apparent, especially in remote districts 
where life is simple and children do not have 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 53 

counteracting and distracting influences. It be- 
hooves every teacher to make use of these 
obviously potential possibilities of moral stew- 
ardship. 

Every teacher should be thoroughly honest and 
conscientious in every phase of school work and 
not shirk or imperfectly or indifferently perform 
duties. Children are quick to note such defection 
and its demoralizing influence is marked. 

Many teachers are themselves the sorry prod- 
ucts of the lack of moral training in the public 
schools. They, by hook or crook, cram enough 
jumbled information into their brains to be able 
to " pass examination " and then, without any 
natural aptitude or acquired qualifications for 
teaching, they sally forth to play havoc with the 
training of children. Themselves untrained, 
knowing little or nothing of child nature or the 
psychological order of Its development, they cheat 
the pupils out of their priceless birthright and 
obtain their salaries under false pretenses. They 
are not teachers, only " sounding brass and 
tinkling cymbals," masqueraders wearing the 
livery of a calling with sacred responsibilities. 

All the states are giving more and more atten- 
tion to the training of teachers and stricter re- 
quirements along this line are being adopted. As 
moral training becomes a more distinct part of 
public school work, teachers of necessity will have 



54 MORAL TRAINING 

to be fitted carefully and thoroughly for this deli- 
cate function. 

Beacon lights of a new and better era in public 
school teaching already are shining afar. False 
teachers are being displaced. Teaching is being 
made a profession, is being elevated from its long- 
abused position of " stepping stone to something 
better." Enlightened public sentiment is de- 
manding trained, thoroughly qualified men and 
women as teachers. The days of the superficial, 
untrained and unfit information-monger are num- 
bered. Another generation will witness the cul- 
mination of a notable evolution in this respect. 



IV 

BENEFITS OF MORAL TRAINING 

GENERAL REMARKS 

IN the primal dawn of creation, as the AI- 
nighty breathed into existence the varied forms 
of plant and animal life and pronounced the 
eternal fiat fixing the functions of each animated 
kingdom, He is represented by the sacred writer 
as looking upon the product of His omnipotent 
will through the eyes of omniscience and putting 
the stamp of His approval upon all the orderly 
systems thus inaugurated upon the earth. " And 
God saw everything that He had made and, be- 
hold, it was very good." 

As there are three distinct kingdoms in the ma- 
terial world, each with a separate function in the 
universal plan, and yet all closely interrelated and 
interdependent, so man was created a trinity, his 
nature composed of three distinct yet closely in- 
terrelated kingdoms. Philosophy and science, as 
well as the Bible, teach that nothing was created 
without a definite purpose. No part of the three- 
fold nature of man, therefore, properly can be 
regarded as a superfluity. Neither can immunity 

55 



S6 MORAL TRAINING 

from development be claimed for any part of 
man's nature on the ground that It has no func- 
tion. The mental, the moral and the physical 
kingdoms In man each has Its peculiar capabilities, 
Its distinct functions, and yet so closely related, so 
sympathetic are they that none may suffer or be 
neglected without all being affected. In the or- 
derly and symmetrical development of the child- 
man the moral nature cannot be neglected or 
Ignored without the mental and physical being 
made to suffer. Thus It Is seen that the child of 
vicious habits drains Its own physical being and 
sows the seeds of physical and mental decay. 
There Is no more fearful physical truth In the 
Scriptures than that voicing of the Inexorable 
operations of a natural law of the physical world, 
" Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap; he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh 
reap corruption.'' 

Nor does the mental nature escape unscathed 
amid vicious indulgence. The mind most readily 
responds to the blighting Influence of vitiated 
morals. Its faculties, besotted and blunted, be- 
come deformed and the deformities turn awry the 
best efforts toward mental training on the part of 
parents and teachers. 

To cast out, so far as possible, these tares of 
moral corruption which children have sown or 
inherited; so to cultivate the moral nature of 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 57 

youth not yet tainted by immorality that the seeds 
of corruption may not find lodgment and take 
root — this is the province of moral training. As 
the great mass of children of this country receive 
practically all their instruction in public schools, it 
is there moral training must be intrenched for the 
moral salvation of the future. The benefits that 
would flow from moral training of public school 
children are so many and diverse as to defy com- 
plete summary. 

Let us contemplate the child comprehensively 
as it sets out upon the uncertain pilgrimage of life, 
not of itself knowing the safe way, ignorant of 
the laws that govern each stage of its existence, 
not comprehending its duty to itself or its fellow- 
beings. If haply the public schools supply a 
moral guide, this mentor of the child takes the 
unwitting nature and step by step leads it on, all 
the while writing upon the tablet of its impres- 
sionable nature the rules for safe moral conduct 
along the whole pathway from childhood to the 
goal of age. Gradually the way unfolds and is 
mapped out in detail in the child's mind and 
heart, so that it needs but refer thereto at any 
parting of the ways or at any doubtful point on 
the journey to determine the true path of up- 
rightness. 

At the beginning of the journey the little pil- 
grim is taught introspectively — instructed in its 



58 MORAL TRAINING 

own powers and weaknesses, how to conserve and 
develop the one and how to overcome the other; 
how to travel so as to get the most good and the 
minimum of ill for itself out of life. Then, as 
the eager pilgrim waxes in strength and under- 
standing, its moral horizon is widened and its 
duties toward fellow-pilgrims is made clea^r. It 
is taught that giving moral aid to those in need 
does not impoverish the giver nor does withhold- 
ing enrich, but on the contrary that giving has its 
reflex action of blessing while withholding has its 
baneful, dwarfing influence upon him who with- 
holds. Gradually the whole range of elementary 
civic and social obligations is traversed. The as- 
piring embryonic pilgrim is Impressed that life's 
road is not a solitary thoroughfare, that its prob- 
lems and pleasures are not for self alone, that its 
duties and responsibilities embrace society and the 
state, the present and the future. 

The weaknesses of the young traveler's moral 
nature are bolstered against the Inevitable pit- 
falls and quicksands of temptation which will 
beset the path. The lesson Is Impressed that, 
should the pilgrim scrupulously regard the in- 
structions given and safely cross these dangerous 
places it not only will have added strength unto 
itself but its Influence will have helped other weak 
natures to withstand the same dangers. As it ad- 
vances on the moral way it is instructed from the 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 59 

human wrecks that strew its path — the idle, the 
vicious, who have wearied of well-doing and have 
fallen by the wayside, or are struggling hope- 
lessly to keep in the right way. The child's moral 
vision is sharpened. It sees other pilgrims like 
itself go cheerily on their way bearing not only 
their own burdens but stopping now and again to 
assist some weaker pilgrim. On the other hand, 
it sees the dread consequences and tendencies of 
vice. Boys and girls, men and women, them- 
selves throwing away their opportunities to walk 
in the safe and manifest road of moral duty and 
taking to the crooked and unsafe by-roads, bor- 
dered by precipices and strewn by thorns, instead 
of being impelled by their own fearful mistakes 
to warn others, set about to snare their fellows 
who are keeping to the right way; and even 
though they do not actively try to accomplish the 
downfall of others, yet their influence unbidden 
goes forth to its fell work. Some weak pilgrim 
who hitherto has kept in the straight path, looks 
aside at some acquaintance or friend in the by- 
ways and, either overcome with discouragement 
with the sight of others failing, or lured by the 
siren voice of vice, he yields and falls and evil 
influence has scored its victim. 

And thus is our young impulsive pilgrim given 
a comprehensive, kaleidoscopic view of the path- 
way it must traverse from the cradle to the grave. 



6o MORAL TRAINING 

Its eyes behold the good and the evil — the one 
it is taught to choose at all times and in all circum- 
stances, the other consistently to eschew ; and with 
the knapsack of its mind and its heart well-stored 
with moral viands, with its physical frame trained 
for the stern realities of the journey and with its 
mind developed to its keenest capacity, this ideal 
pilgrim is a splendid specimen of symmetrical 
youth " trained up in the way he should go '' — 
the ideal product of the public schools of the fu- 
ture. Surely such a consummation will not be 
dismissed as Utopian. 

Temperance teaching in public schools in many 
states of the union has demonstrated its efficacy 
and the results attained argue eloquently in behalf 
of systematic general moral training. 

The tendency of the age toward mad material- 
ism makes the demand for moral training of chil- 
dren immediate and urgent. Let the public 
schools replenish the moral blood of society with 
the rich life-current of active, progressive, ag- 
gressive moral citizenship and soon an age of gold 
will be transmuted into a golden age; an era of 
" plain living and high thinking " will dawn; citi- 
zenship will cease to be a cloak for whited sepul- 
chers and will rise to its full stature ; the land will 
flow with the milk and honey of '^ good will 
toward men," exemplified in the marts of trade 
and amid the strenuosities of commerce and in- 



OF THE SCHOOL CHILD 6i 

dustry, as well as in the sequestered vales of life ; 
men and women will lift themselves to loftier 
planes of living; the normal, well-poised, manly, 
ideal American will be in flower and individual, 
community, state and nation will go forward, 
new-fledged, to hasten the fullest fruition of the 
most beneficent type of civilization the world has 
seen. Great is to be the America of the future 
and the public school, fostering public morals, is 
to be its prophet ! 



OCT 1 ! 1913 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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029 467 957 1 



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